JMU - Glossary of Terms, Abbreviations and Acronyms

Glossary of Terms, Abbreviations and Acronyms

Advance - A powerful donor, prospect and events management system that will help JMU manage relationships more personally, address the complexities of fundraising requirements more efficiently, and measure performance more rigorously

Allocation - An allocation is a number or code that indicates the designation for a gift or pledge. (We used the word “fund” for the gift designation in Viking). In Advance, there can be multiple allocations tied to a foundation account/fund.

Alumni - Any entity who has earned a JMU degree (graduate or undergraduate)

Alumni non-degreed - An entity will be considered an Alumni (non-degreed) if they meet one of the following criteria:

Have given a gift to the University

Are assigned to a Development Officer (not suspects, prospect only)

Have attended an event (not invitees, attendees only)

Have received a scholarship

Have a spouse who is an alumni

Played a varsity sport

Are a deceased student with “in memory of” gifts

Have requested regular communications (IE: receive the magazine)

Are serving/have served on an advisory board or committee

APT - Advance project team, a cross-divisional team of talented individuals from AIS and IT

Appeal - A solicitation campaign that is assigned to an individual entity or group of entities in the system, such as direct mail and phone appeals

Appeal Header - In Advance, the appeal header contains the information specific to the appeal such as title, description, responsible person, and key statistics such as response

Bio - Any biographical information that we keep on an entity. Education, Family Relationships, Involvement etc.

CAE - Council for Aid to Education, a national nonprofit organization based in New York City. Initially established in 1952 to advance corporate support of education and to conduct policy research on higher education. Today CAE is also focused on improving quality and access in higher education

CASE - Council for Advancement and Support of Education, a professional association serving education institutions and the advancement of professionals who work on their behalf in alumni relations, communications, development, marking and allied areas

Clipboard - Advance allows you to store and share multiple lists of entities that are created, viewed, saved and manipulated using the Clipboard. From the Clipboard you can use hypertext links to access entity profiles, prospect details, etc. You can also access previously saved ID Lists created by you or others

Constituent - Alumni, parents, students, current and retired employees, corporations, foundations and other friends of the university

Conversion - The complex process of pulling all existing data from Viking into temporary tables and then loading the data into the new Advance system based on mapping

DAF - Donor-advised fund, a charitable giving vehicle administered by a third party

Entity - The most basic building block of Advance, can be either a person or an organization. Each entity can be linked to any other entity in the system

Entity Exclusions - A selection of entity ID’s that are to be removed from an appeal population based on very specific characteristics such as board membership, assignment or entity status. Exclusions are applied to appeal lists before the appeal is assigned to entities. For example, entities with a status of “Deceased” or “Purgable” will be excluded from the appeal

Former student - Any degree-seeking entity who attended the university but did not receive a degree and is no longer engaged with the university in any other manner

Goal - Any objective set for a program or effort that reflects what results are expected by the end of the measuring period. Example: President's Council goal for retaining prior year members is 80 percent or 1,000 prior year members

KPI - Key Performance Indicator - A KPI is a critical measure for a program, department, division or university used for evaluating level of success. A KPI can also be stated as being a Goal. Example of a KPI maybe Total Dollars Goal for Outright Gifts and Pledges or Total Alumni Donors. KPI’s should be for a year or a period within a year such as a month or quarter. Often times an annual KPI will be divided into Monthly or Quarterly Targets to help measure progress and take into consideration cyclical conditions. Using Contact Visits for a Development Officer as an example, their annual goal may be 300 visits with monthly targets where the visits in August may be set to 15 but the visits in October be set to 30 based on the cyclical nature of visits.

Look-up - The mechanism that allows you to search the Advance database to find records that match specific criteria. You may enter search criteria used for look_ups, select saved criteria or select a saved look_up, which contains stored criteria and a default format for output. There are three types of look-ups in Advance:

Lookup Templates - Lookup Templates allow you to search for data using pre-defined templates that contain commonly-referenced data fields. This method limits the search to one data type (Bio, Gift, etc.) and automatically matches the results format to the selected template.

Advanced Lookups - Advanced Lookups allow you to perform sophisticated searches by entering numerous pieces of search criteria across several different subsystems.

Mapping - The process of moving the specific data fields in Viking to fields in Advance. It entails not just where we want the data to go but how we want to view it when we get it there. For example, the 60 relationship types in Viking will be boiled down to 22 relationship types in Advance

MC - Madison Century campaign, a $50 million comprehensive capital campaign concluded on June 30, 2008. It linked the celebration of James Madison University's 100th anniversary with the beginning of our next 100 years.

Navigation Tree - The Navigation (Page) Tree is located on the leftmost vertical space of the page in Advance (view image). This Tree is the primary navigation tool in Advance. However, it is important to keep in mind that the Navigation Tree is not the only navigation tool on the Main Menu and Go To also provides navigation methods.

Oracle - The database platform that Advance runs on where data is stored and retrieved

RC - Ruffalo Cody, a system used to record data for the university's Madison Connection call center

RoboHelp - AdobeSoftware used to write/record site help in Advance

Segment - A selection of entities placed into a pool based on specific characteristics that are shared by all entities in the pool. Segments are the basis for most appeals. Characteristics for segments could be Giving history, Educational history, or Record type. Segment Example: COB Lybunt $250+ (A College of Business alum who gave a gift > $250 last year, but has not given yet this year)

Site help - “How to” documentation reached by clicking on the “?” in Advance

SME - Subject matter experts, individuals who are considered experts at their job and will be leveraged by the project team to help with mapping and user acceptance testing

Specifications - Complete written descriptions of the reports or interfaces to be developed (examples: DOscorecard, Student Admin system interface)

SQL - Standard Query Language, a coding language used in the database to extract and update information. For reporting, used to extract

Sungard - The software vendor that we are working with to deliver the new system

Suspect - An entity that Prospect Research "suspects" may be a major gift prospect. Once a DO has visited the "suspect" and confirmed they have major gift capacity, they can become a "prospect" in the system

TMS - Table Maintenance System - These tables contain values and descriptions for all of the dropdown codes used by Advance. Each TMS table can be viewed, modified and printed from “TMS Maintenance” in Advance. Every TMS table is either simple or complex. The simple tables have been designed to define and verify which coded values are valid, and to enforce rules about which users are permitted to use certain values, but not others. Complex tables contain additional fields that are used for calculations, flags, and switches in various operations and integrity checking procedures

Target - a measurement of where a program or effort is to Goal during a measurement period. Example: President's Council goal for retaining pior year members is 80 percent based on 3 months into the FY; our target is 250 prior year members

UA - University Advancement, a division of James Madison University that strives to build stronger relationships with alumni and donors, raise funds for campus projects and scholarships, market to prospective students, and foster support of higher education at JMU

UAT - User Acceptance Testing, end user testing of the system to ensure both clean conversion of data and system functionality. In software development, UAT is one of the final stages of a project and often occurs before a client or customer accepts the new system

Viking - University Advancement's soon-to-be retired legacy system

VSE - Voluntary Support of Education, a survey sponsored by CAE, the authoritative national source of information on private giving to higher education and private K-12. It consistently captures about 85 percent of the total voluntary support to colleges and universities in the United States. CAE has managed the survey as a public service for over 50 years.